Press Releases

The Muni Market's Drive Toward Transparency--Technology Holds the Key

Waters Technology - Emilia David
June 2, 2017

The municipal bond market has been portrayed as awesomely complex and opaque, although better data gathering through electronic means has greatly increased its transparency. And, as Emilia David explains, we’re only at the beginning of this revolution.

With the focus turning to troubled issuers like Puerto Rico, whose bonds have since defaulted after the territory filed for bankruptcy, the $3.6 trillion municipal (muni) bond market is once again in the news. Debt issued by cities is often a sure bet to stash investments and round out fixed-income strategies—barring the occasional bankruptcies of the past few years. But it is also seen as an opaque market that is harder to predict than other asset classes.